


Man's Best Friend

by eclecticanarchist



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Imprisonment, Non-Consensual Pet Play, injured frank castle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 07:43:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14420766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eclecticanarchist/pseuds/eclecticanarchist
Summary: Sam moved forward again, gun at the ready, to peer into the semi-darkness of the dog house.What he saw was not at all what he was expecting. He felt his stomach turn, and he fought down the urge to retch. Instead of a dog, there was a man cowering in the corner of the doghouse. He was tall, his leanly muscled limbs folded underneath him as he looked up at Sam with wide, angry eyes.





	Man's Best Friend

“Stein,” Dinah said through his earpiece, “We have eyes on Rawlins outside of the house, Agent Vasquez is with him, sealing the deal. Team One is heading in, take Team Two and do a perimeter check of the back. Meet us inside.” 

Sam was behind the Rawlins house with a small crew of people helping to secure the premises. Dinah might have Rawlins primed for the take down, but there was no telling what else he had squirreled away, and the last thing they wanted was unwanted surprises, particularly the armed kind. Movement caught his eye. It was coming from inside a medium sized structure that on closer inspection turned out to be a rudimentary doghouse, with a post and lead hammered into the ground outside. The lead was trailing into the doghouse, and as Sam watched, it twitched to the right. Something was alive in there. 

“We have movement,” Sam whispered into the mic at his shoulder. “There’s a doghouse with a post and chain outside. We have to clear it before we proceed, but this is probably a case for the Animal Handling Unit. Approaching now.” Sam motioned to two of the men securing the back to follow him and he walked toward the dog house. 

“Easy, boy easy,” Sam said, instinctually slipping into his ‘talking to animals voice’ as he moved closer. “Come out nice and slow, we don’t mean any harm. We’re here to take you away from here.” 

The lead stopped moving altogether. The dog must have heard him, might even be listening, which was a good sign. Sam silently cursed not having anything to lure the thing out. He moved forward again, gun at the ready, to peer into the semi-darkness of the dog house.

What he saw was not at all what he was expecting. He felt his stomach turn, and he fought down the urge to retch. Instead of a dog, there was a man cowering in the corner of the doghouse. He was tall, his leanly muscled limbs folded underneath him as he looked up at Sam with wide, angry eyes. The lead from outside was attached to a collar around his throat, a thick leather ordeal that left an irritated ring of flesh around the man’s throat. 

The man was dirty, no doubt from huddling on ground, and too skinny for his large frame. Traces of blood were smeared across his body and dotted the ground he crouched on. Sam gulped. Some of it was fresh. From where he stood, Sam couldn’t see the majority of the other man’s body, but if the bruising on his face was anything to go by, the man was in a great amount of pain. A slight shift in the stranger’s posture showed that his hands were cuffed in front of him. The tag hanging from the collar’s d-ring read ‘Frank’. 

“Hey,” Sam said, trying his best to be soothing, “Is your name Frank?” When no reply came, he forged onwards, “My name is Sam, I’m with Homeland Security. We’re going to get you out of here, we can help you.”

“Someone call an ambulance,” Sam ordered over one shoulder, before turning his attention back to the doghouse’s occupant. The man - Frank - made sound low in his throat that was closer to a growl than anything, and he didn’t budge. Sam cursed internally. He was not prepared to deal with this. The Rawlins case was supposed to be an easy sting on a corrupt military official smuggling drugs, that was it. Nothing in the file suggested he would be involved in some sort of twisted human trafficking. 

“Please, let us help you,” Sam repeated, trying to make the gun in his hand seem as non-threatening as possible. He didn’t want to consider this man a threat, but given his state, there really was no telling what his role in all this was. Was he here willingly, just biding his time to attack? But why would one of Rawlins’ allies be chained and beaten in an outdoor doghouse? He knew nothing about this man. Hell, Sam didn’t even know if Frank was his real name, but the man was clearly in need of medical attention and in Sam’s mind, that gave him the benefit of the doubt. 

Still the crouching man made no move, he was seemingly frozen in the back corner of the structure, head bowed with his dark eyes boring into Sam’s own, Sam was at a loss of what to do when Dinah buzzed in through the intercom once again. “Stein, what is the hold up? We have Rawlins in custody. Waiting on you to do a sweep of the house.”

“We have a vic out here that complicated things. We’ll join you as soon as the medics get here,” Sam replied, not taking his eyes off of Frank. 

“Stay there with them, then,” Madani said. “There’s movement upstairs and I want men on it now, before they have time to surprise us with something nasty.”

“Roger that,” Sam motioned towards his men, “Go find Madani, Stevens and I have it covered here.” They nodded in reply, jogging towards the house. When they reached the house, Sam tuned back to the aptive, only to be whacked across the face by two manacled hands. With short, efficient movements, the man knocked the gun out of his hands and sent the agent sprawling.

“Who are you,” he growled, dipping into a lunge and levelling Sam’s own gun at him with ease, only a slight tremble in his hand betraying any sort of weakness. 

“Agent Sam Stein, Homeland Security,” Sam squeaked. It wasn’t until now that he noticed the other man was completely nude, without even the barest scrap covering him. Instead of making him seem vulnerable and open, his nudity added to the desperate fury behind his eyes. It made him seem more dangerous. From the opening of the doghouse, Sam heard the click of Stevens’ safety coming off. “Stand down Stevens, he’s a vic.”

“What are you doing here?” Frank asked eyes flashing toward Stevens for the briefest of seconds while he kept the gun trained on Sam’s skull. In this new position, Sam noticed his right leg had a deep, angry looking wound on the upper thigh, surrounded by crusted blood, and there was swelling around the knee.

“Busting Colonel William Rawlins for drug trafficking,” Sam said, trying his damndest to keep his voice calm. “You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?”

“You’re asking if I work for him,” Franks said, his voice going dangerously still even as the shaking in his gun hand increased. 

“Well, you do have a gun aimed at me currently,” Sam ventured. “But you’re also chained and bleeding and that leads me to believe you aren’t here willingly. So put the gun down. If you come with me we can get those chains off of you and get you to a hospital.”

“You have keys?” 

“No, but we have bolt cutters out -” Sam started, only to be cut off by Madani’s voice crackling through the earpiece. Frank visibly flinched back from the noise, looking for its source. Somewhere in the struggle, it had fallen out of Sam’s ear, and now lay on the rough ground, Madani’s words booming in the enclosed space of the doghouse.

“Sam, there’s someone up here, he’s not armed as far as we can tell, he could be another vic. Do you copy?” At her words, Sam watched as the other man stiffened. The gun’s muzzle dipped. 

“I copy, Madani, over. Do you know who she’s talking about, Frank?” Sam asked gently. Frank’s face betrayed nothing. “Is he a friend of yours? We can help you both.” Frank made no noise but the gun clattered from his hands. A mix of unintelligible emotions flashed across his bruised face, and Sam took that as his cue to snatch the gun back. “I’m going to get the bolt cutters now.”

He backed away from where Frank was still kneeling. He had a choice, Sam realized, he could chose to trust this strange, terrified man and put away his gun, or he could err on the side of caution and keep as much firepower between him and the stranger as possible. Sam holstered his gun. His next move was for the bolt cutters, making sure to telegraph his movements so as not to startle Frank. He gently clipped the chain at his throat, and between his cuffs, but the cutters were too big to free Frank of the collar and cuffs themselves. 

“There’s an ambulance waiting out front, will you stay with them until we extract your friend?” Frank shook his head and Sam sighed. Of course this was going to be difficult. From the corner of his eye Sam saw a woman wearing a dark blue EMT jumpsuit. “Please, stay with the medics. We can’t do our job if we’re worried about covering you.” 

“No,” Frank said simply, edging forward. Sam tried not to stare as Frank unfolded himself from the doghouse and the muscles cording his chest and arms rippled in the sun. As his gaze travelled down the lines of his body Sam was rudely reminded of the fact that Frank was naked. Very naked. 

“If you won’t stay here willingly I will have to cuff you and I really don’t want to do that,” Sam quickly stripped out of his Homeland windbreaker and passed it to the other man. Frank was clearly mulling over Sam’s threat, eyeing him up to see if he’d really try it. Sam put on his best Dinah Madani glare and stared the taller man down. Frank broke eye contact first, his shoulders slumping as he huffed, grabbed the proffered windbreaker and tied it around his waist without another word.

“Stevens, with me,” Sam sighed, watching as the medic supported Frank over to the waiting ambulance. Sam didn’t miss Frank’s soulful eyes lingering over his shoulder. 

They made their way towards the house, Sam’s hand moving to unholster his gun even as Stevens took the lead. At least the other man was listening. After all, a windbreaker would do no good against bullets, and the last thing Sam wanted was for Frank to get hurt anymore. 

The kitchen proved to be clear, as did the dining room, but when they hit the first floor hallway, a man sprung out from the shadows, gun in hand. Before Sam had time to blink, Stevens had an elbow in their attacker’s face and was shoving him over one hip. It was a clean knock out, and Sam bent to retrieve the man’s gun as Stevens cuffed him. The rest of their sweep of the first floor proved innocent, it wasn’t until they climbed to the second floor that the trouble started. 

The shouting echoed clear through the house. It was the typical standoff script instructing the opponent to lower their weapons and get to their knees slowly. There was a semicircle of man fanned out in front of an open door at the end of the hallway. Sam quickly spotted Madani crouching behind a wall and joined her.

“Sam, there you are,” Madani murmured, fixated on the standoff. “We thought he was a prisoner of some sort because of the security on the door but when we got inside, he drew a gun on us. They’re trying to get him calmed down now. Ambulance here yet?”

“Yeah, EMT is downstairs,” Sam replied softly, eyes trained on the confrontation in front of them. “What so we know about this guy?”

“Nothing,” Came the surly retort. “We know nothing but he could have information of Rawlings if he’s willing to cooperate.”

“Have you tried talking to him?”

“Goddamnit Sam do I look like a damn rookie, of course we tried talking to him, he won’t say anything except ‘fuck off’.” Sam took a deep breath. He had a idea. It was a bit of a gamble but if Frank knew who Madani was talking about over the comm link…

Sam ducked out of from behind cover, gun still up as he advanced, shouldering through the crowd. The man in front of him looked nothing like He was expecting. Based on Frank’s appearance he was expecting more of the same general maltreatment, but the man in front of him looked like he’d just walked off a runway. He was clad in a three piece suit that probably cost a years worth of rent on Sam’s apartment, not even counting the expensive leather shoes. The only crack in this man’s slicked back façade were dark bags of sleeplessness underneath his eyes. 

“What’s your name,” Sam asked, trying to remember every course in negotiation he’d ever taken. As soon as Sam spoke, the other man snapped his attention over to him and Sam fought hard not the balk at the emotionless depths of his eyes. They reminded him of Frank’s eyes, dark and angry, but where Frank’s eyes had held fire, this man’s held nothing but ice.

“I ain’t telling you shit,” he barked, clicking off the safety as he raised his jaw in defiance.

“Look we found Frank. If you want to help him, put the gun down,” Sam saw the man’s jaw twitch. Clearly this was the right track to take. 

“You found Frankie? Where is he?”

“Out front with the ambulance,” Sam replied, moved hissendign a brief prayer up to whoever was listening before moving his hand to slowly reholster his gun. If it worked with Frank, maybe a similar display of his nonviolent intentions would work with his friend.

“And why the hell should I believe you?”

“Just put down the gun,” Sam said, reaching out a placating hand. He could see the indecision written clear across the man’s face but after a few minutes of deliberation, he slowly lowered the gun to the floor. He kicked it to Sam and slowly raised his hands above his head. 

“What’s your name?” Sam repeated, moving forward to pat him down. Other than he gun the man was unarmed. Sam heard madani ordering the men to stand down as soon as Sam gave her the all clear. 

“Billy Russo, where’s Frankie? Is he okay?” Sam stepped back, meeting his eyes blankly. 

“If you know anything about how he’s been treated here, you know he’s far from okay. Come this way.” Madani was already leading her team back downstairs to start going through the place for evidence that could be used against Rawlins in his trial. Sam, meanwhile, was following Russo down the set of stairs and out to the front lawn. 

Sam half expected Frank to be gone, but there he was, laying in a gurney about to be loaded into the ambulance. As soon as he saw Sam, he sprang up to his feet against the protests of those around him. He managed a few steps, his eyes darting wildly over the groups. When his eyes finally landed on Russo, he froze. 

For a terrible second, no one breathed, no one moved. Then a dull thump of two men embracing followed by a drawn out sob. It was impossible to say which man moved first, but suddenly they were in each others’ arms. Sam watched with his heart in his throat as Frank stood with his face buried in the shoulder of the stranger’s suit. Russo was returning his embrace, wrapping his arms around Frank’s too-thin form. 

The contrast between them was staggering. Here was Frank, dirty and bloody and naked save for Sam’s windbreaker still wound around his waist and a shock blanket draped over his shoulders. And then here was this well-dressed, well-groomed man who clinging to Frank for dear life. Another sob reverberated through the yard, and Sam realized with heart-crushing certainty that Frank was the one crying.

“Mr. Russo,” Sam said, stepping toward the pair, “you can ride with him to the hospital but it really would be best if Frank laid down again.” Russo nodded against the side of Frank’s head and slowly — slowly — maneuvered him back over onto the stretcher. Two rather annoyed looking EMTs hoisted him into the ambulance, Billy paused as he stepped up into the vehicle. 

“What’s your name?” He demanded, looking back toward Sam.

“Sam Stein.”

“Thank you, Agent Stein. Thank you for finding us.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hey I hope you enjoyed! I have more of this written so I might post it if people are interested 
> 
> Find me on tumblr as ferrejoly :)


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